Question: How incompetent are Trinidad and Tobago Attorneys-at-law and Judges? Permit me to re-phrase.
How incompetent are attorneys and Judges practising in the Trinidad and Tobago courts?
Answer: Very!

Year after embarrassing year the Public are witness to one disgusting verdict after another.

In The State vs Mouttet the defendant admitted to social use of a narcotic, namely cannabis, and casually informed the Court that 'meh wife always told me one day ah woulda get ketch'. But Mouttet is a millionaire many times over so learned Judge decided, in his wisdom, that his value to society as an employer mitigated against a custodial sentence.
I wager he is no longer rolling the chronic because we all know how simple it is to go cold-turkey. Ent?
Steupssssss.

And of course there was 'The State vs Brad Boyce(1997)' wherein the defendant 'won' a not guilty verdict on the instruction of Justice Herbet Volney because the evidence of the forensic pathologist was entirely unreliable.
Unreliable because the pathologist, Hughvon DesVignes, had not the right to pass himself as a forensic pathologist.
Oddly the Judge's opinion on this, lasted all of one matter because Dr Des Vignes is now a recognised and accredited forensic pathologist.
Brad Boyce, last I heard, was earning foreign currency on an oil rig.
Steupsss.

There are many more, but the most recent is 'The State vs Deochan Ramdhanie, Mantoor Ramdhanie, Patrick Toolsie and Ken Gresham'.
I have read and heard various commentary damning the decision by the Privy Council Lords to free the accused but anyone who read their considered judgement would be mad to disagree with its content and verdict.
Simply put, Karl Hudson-Phillips QC fucked up, embarrassingly, and incompetently.
He gave testimony, alluded to evidence not put in, and belittled opposing counsel. How can an attorney of great appreciation and esteem be so reckless and amateurish to act with such contumely and arrogance in a Court of Law.

In my opinion, the Law Lords were kind to Queens Counsel, for he was deserving of censure fitted to his reprobate behaviour.

The Judge, now Appeal Court Justice Stanley John, added weight to the tilt in favour of the accused when he failed in his duty to install mitigating evidence of character. A flaw one cannot easily excuse. Sadly he is not alone, as this was a point of law cited as breached in the case of The State vs Jagdeo Singh.

At the end of the day, Karl Hudson-Phillips incompetence and arrogance has cost the State millions of dollars. Perhaps as many as ten million dollars.
Thankfully, and I say that with no remorse, Mantoor Ramdhanie died in prison. A deserving punsihment for the cocaine trafficker.

Unfortunately, the son of a cocaine trafficker Deochan Ramdhanie, the nephew of a cocaine trafficker Patrick Toolsie, and the neighbour of a cocaine trafficker Ken Gresham live on to enjoy the fruits -or is it the chopra- of their labour.
The State has already moved to 'unfreeze' their accounts which hold over 7million dollars. The State is also responsible for costs and therefore owe the legal counsel of these scum, millions of dollars.

But that's what you get when you rely on incompetent fuckers as Karl Hudson-Phillips, Stanley John, and the troika of unintelligent Appeal Court Justices who heard the matter. Just another day in the tropics.

Thank God we do not have class action law suits for Asbestos, Mesothelioma or Fen Phen because the Treasury would go bust.